


Dried Up All the Sea

by drosophilase



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-07 12:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drosophilase/pseuds/drosophilase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A cautionary tale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dried Up All the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> For Day 4 of crisscolfer week. Sometimes Happily Ever After is a work in progress.
> 
> This is really... different. warning for OC POV and stream of consciousness-y things and yeah. It's different.
> 
> It takes a village: thanks to marissa, allison, and vicky for cheerleading and making sure I was making sense, and all my love to grey for really getting it.

Getting to L.A. was the easy part.  A duffel bag stuffed with clothes, a box of hair dye, a cap pulled low, a twenty-mile hitchhiked ride with a one-way train ticket and the dim lights of a town too small for room to breathe are far behind her.

No, it’s the _being_ in L.A. that’s hard.  Everyone always talks about the freedom of running away but not the crushing confusion that comes after. What about a place to sleep?  She doesn’t even have a place to hide from the wind cutting straight through her threadbare handed-down hoodie, the late November cold snap fierce this close to the coast.  Where does a fugitive go when the refugee camp is a heartless city?

She ditched her cell phone as soon as she walked out of her house, so she feels twice as vulnerable as she pulls her duffel bag closer, clutching the pocket knife she took from her brother’s old room half-hidden in her sleeve.  There’s really no plan-- she didn’t even think she’d get as far as the train station, let alone all the way to L.A.  The independence is just as fierce as the jittery nerves that are threatening to turn into panic, and the longer she thinks about how very anonymous she is now, how very alone, the dizzier she gets.

She’s really lost.  Not that she knew where she was in the first place, but now she can’t even tell which way the train station is or what direction she was initially headed.  There’s no way to tell how long she’s been walking but the sun has set and every restaurant she passes is brimming with people dressed in finery she’s never had.

The hills that border the city are up close and personal now, and the neighborhoods are fancier than anything she’s seen in person, but nothing like the multi-million dollar mansions she’s seen on TV.  This part of L.A. (and she doesn’t know much about cities but this probably isn’t even Los Angeles anymore) is more like the cities she’s used to.  She recognizes shopping malls and restaurants, buildings that aren’t taller than four or five stories.

Nearly resigned to finding the least-threatening alleyway, she starts thinking about the reality of spending a night on the street when something instinctual makes her freeze.  She takes another step, then two, then three.  Finally she hears it-- a step just off from hers.  She’s being followed.

Heart beating fast, she veers back to the more populated areas, but the restaurant a block ahead feels so far away.  She tries to remember what she’s learned from television and movies-- should she try to run? turn around and say something? scream?-- clutching the knife closer and thumbing the blade.

A car drives by, the first one in a while on this street.  It’s sleek and silver, the kind that she’s seen a dozen times today.  She wouldn’t notice this one at all except that it abruptly makes a U turn in the middle of the (thankfully deserted) street and comes back, purplish headlights blinding her as it pulls right up to the curb.

And she wasn’t sure if she believed in god anymore but oh does she pray when the drivers side door opens and a voice that doesn’t quite match the tall, broad-shouldered body tells her to get in.  Maybe he’s no better than whoever’s following her but in the glare off the headlights he almost looks like an angel, standing vigil as she slides into the immaculate leather seats and pulls her duffel bag into her lap.  She keeps the knife in her hand.

She counts down from fifty and he slides into the drivers’ seat on twenty-six, putting the car back into gear.  Icy fear lances her gut when she thinks about the shadow following her footsteps so she doesn’t look.  Putting a face to the feeling would make it ten times worse.

“So, do you have a name?” the guy says after three minutes of silence, according to the glowing blue numbers on the dashboard.

Finally, safely miles away from the shadows, she looks up.  He has a really nice profile, and his skin is so blue in the dashboard glow that he must have really porcelain skin.  She can relate.  He doesn’t look untrustworthy dressed in a button-up and pants that are either nice jeans or more casual slacks but either way are tight as _fuck_.  He’s a lot older than her but not as old as her parents.  Early thirties, she decides, thinking she could see him alongside her Aunt Heather.

He looks nice enough, and something in her gut says she can trust him, but then there’s missing person reports and newspapers and-- fake name it is.

“Rachel Berry,” she says finally, trying to sound casual, like the name is hers for 16 years and not for the last six seconds.  He doesn’t say anything, just smirks, slowing down for a yellow light.

“You could have made that,” she says, feeling like an asshole as soon as the words are out of her mouth.  He makes a little acknowledgement noise, still saying nothing.  It’s really quiet but she doesn’t feel like she has any right to turn on the radio even if she could work the fancy controls.

“So, do _you_ have a name?”

He turns towards her fully while the light is still red, and she gets the first good look at his face straight-on.  It’s so familiar, just barely, like how she sort-of remembers her childhood friend’s mother.  The voice is what really keeps picking at her memory, though, like if maybe he would just say a certain phrase she would get it.  It is L.A. after all, but she would know if he was a currently-in-the-spotlight actor, wouldn’t she?

He’s got that sort of derisive half-smile, narrowing his eyes like he’s trying to figure her out.  There’s not much to see, just a sixteen-year-old girl in borrowed and stolen and barely paid-for secondhand clothes with not even much will to live. 

The light changes and he seems to make up his mind.

“Kurt Hummel,” he says, and she can’t help but cry out.

“You-- _really_ \-- but yes I _know_ you, oh my god.  You were on that show, the one my mom loves.  Oh god there are some songs I still have never heard the original version of, did you know that?  She won’t listen to them, I don’t even know who the original artists are.  There’s one, it’s just you, something by The Beatles...”

“Blackbird?” he says, wondrous like it’s something he pulled out of a dream.

“That’s it,” she confirms, unable to look away from his profile.  She sees it now, the defensive little gay boy with the weird fashion sense.  Thank god his real-life counterpart is better on that front, but the swooped hair is the same.

“Are you going to tell me your real name?” he says, smirking again.

“Are you going to tell me yours?” she counters, folding her arms.

“Chris Colfer,” he says quietly as he turns into a sleepy little neighborhood and slows down to catch the gate.

“Chris Colfer...” she says out loud, because that trips a memory too.  “Oh my god, your books were my favorite bedtime story when I was growing up.”

He grins over at her again, wide with teeth barely showing.  She remembers him from the back flap of the books, now, can’t believe she ever forgot.  He hasn’t changed at all, just a little more wrinkled maybe, a little more worn.  More experience in his eyes, confidence in the way he carries himself.  It’s like when she watches videos of herself from just last year, how much she’s different even when she looks almost the same.

“Well, that’s lovely to hear.  Your parents obviously have excellent taste.”

“Yeah, sure,” she mumbles, raising her shoulders to her ears at the mention of her parents.  If she could she’d just forget that she _had_ parents.

He-- _Chris Colfer_ , jesus-- presses another button and one side of a two-car garage opens, attached to a house on the left that’s really not much different than any of the others, one-story light brick with two tiny palm trees flanking the front walk.

When they pull in she can see there’s a black car parked in the other side, even sleeker than Chris’s, so sleek the door handles aren’t even handles but just silver spots on the side.  She whistles appreciatively, but it makes sense.  Six seasons of a TV show and six novels can’t have left him in a bad place.

He gets out of the car and she sits, unsure if she should follow.

“Are you going to sit there all night, or what?  We usually don’t turn the heating in the garage on until at least December.”

She scrambles out, careful not to hit the shiny black paint with the car door.

Chris is hesitating next to the door to the house interior.

“Ah, shit.  I probably should have called.”

She tilts her head curiously, pulling her duffle bag closer, protectively.  She had assumed the other car was also his, but if someone else lives here, too...  He did say _we_.  The knife is still up her right sleeve but she really hopes she doesn’t have to use it.  How shitty would it be if her favorite childhood author turned out to be a serial killer?

“Just, um,” he says finally, “let me go first.”

He unlocks the door and keys in a six-digit code to the keypad next to the door so the alarm stops blaring.  “Darren?” he calls out, stepping into his own house almost as cautiously as she is.

“Chris? Is that you?  I was starting to wonder if you got lost on the way back from the store, I mean we didn’t have to have that particular brand, I have half a bottle of--”

Chris clears his throat pointedly as another man comes around the corner and oh, she should have prepared herself better when she heard that name.

There’s no way she could have recognized him if she had just like, passed him on the street and he looked like this, with his beard grown in this full, his hair this long.  He’s nothing like the Darren she sees in magazines, not in those sweatpants almost as ratty as her hoodie and a t-shirt that’s two sizes too small.  But that name, and those eyebrows, she does know.

“Darren Criss?” she says faintly, reaching out for the wall to stabilize herself because her knees literally go weak.  L.A. is of course the city where people make it big, Hollywood starlets all around, but she was hoping to like get a glimpse of Jennifer Aniston getting coffee.  She never expected surely not walk right into the house of not one, but two Golden-Globe winning actors.  She was a toddler when Chris won, but she was eight when they stayed up all night to watch Darren win his-- she remembers her mom cried.

“You brought back a guest,” Darren says tightly, and she can practically see the wall going up even behind his thick-framed glasses.

“Rachel Berry, no less,” Chris tries to joke, but there’s a disconnect or something and his half-laugh falls totally flat, echoey in the house that she can’t see past the entrance hall.

Without a word, Darren turns around and disappears.

She gapes a little bit ( _Darren Criss_ ) but she’s pretty sure Chris rolls his eyes.  Her stomach growls right on cue to interrupt the awkward silence, and Chris smiles at her though it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I know that sound.  Come on, we have leftover lo mein.”

Chris clears papers to give her a spot at the dining room table she can tell they hardly ever use.  He tries to take her duffel bag but she won’t let him, though she does slip the pocket knife back into the side pocket when he leaves to get the noodles.  She could never commit murder in Darren Criss’s house.  Or Chris Colfer’s, really, since he and J. K. Rowling are personally responsible for giving her a childhood.  Either way she’s stuck trusting them-- it’s funny how she feels like she knows them even if it’s technically only through a screen.

He deposits three Chinese take-out containers in front of her and her stomach rumbles appreciatively.  He starts to clear off another place-- she can see lots of script snippets, scribbled notes, something that looks a lot like hand-written sheet music-- when what she assumes is some noise from the next room, though she hears none, makes Chris stop and leave the room without even making an excuse.

She shrugs because even if it’s just re-warmed Chinese food it really _does_ smell delicious, especially when she hasn’t eaten for like twelve hours now.

The voices in the next room are a quiet rumble, so quiet she can’t tell them apart even though she knows Darren’s is typically much lower.  It’s soothing, though, to have two adults actually talking instead of arguing.  She puts down the vegetable lo mein and digs out a spring roll, trying to read something upside-down that looks suspiciously like it contains the words Alex and Connor.

Their voices escalate though, like all fucking adults do whenever they attempt to have civil conversation.  She really wants to block it out, especially when they didn’t have to take her in and they’re _famous_ for Christ’s sake and she has no business hearing, but the floors are hardwood and the house layout is open, and, well.

“...Could have been anyone, Chris really, what the fuck were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that there was a girl on the streets about to get raped or worse?  Really, Darren, don’t you even try to say you wouldn’t have done the same.  I will send you out of this house.”

“This isn’t just some girl, Chris, she knows who we are.  She knows who _I_ am.  That doesn’t worry you at all?”

She can hear his measured breath all the way from the dining room.

“Of course it does, honey.  But this is a girl from who-knows-where, barely 15 and she can’t have been in the city more than three days.  Unless she’s hiding a camera in that duffel bag I think we’re fine.”

Huffing a little, she stabs the noodles with more force than necessary.  She’s _sixteen_ , and honestly does she really look like some kind of seedy paparazzi?  Darren is really so worried about a scrawny teenager that Chris had to basically talk him off the ledge?

The sting of the insult melts away, though, and the confusion with it, when their voices soften again and she can hear the quiet smack of a kiss.

She doesn’t remember reading anything about Darren and Chris’s relationship--just from her mom’s obsession with that show she knows that their characters were highschool sweethearts-turned-husbands and that’s pretty much it.  She’s seen them both on “Hollywood hotties over 30” lists, though Chris is rarely in any kind of magazines anymore.  But, really, that’s it.  Not a hint of a rumor of them dating anyone, much less each other.  In fact, she always assumed Darren was straight...

And now she understands just how dangerous she could be, how dangerous Darren thinks she is.

Chris wanders back in but she’s not hungry anymore, leaving the last spring roll untouched and trying to ignore the uneasiness twisting in her gut.  He clears a spot again, hefting a stack of notebooks onto the table so he can sit down.

She shifts uncomfortably, but he doesn’t say anything, shifting through the piles like he’s never seen any of it before.

“Wow, we should really clean off this table.  Then maybe Darren’s brother would actually bring his kids over.”

“I’m not going to tell anybody,” she blurts, feeling a million times better for saying so.  “I’m sorry for intruding on you both like this, and I-- I’m really sorry for overhearing, but I _promise_ I would never say anything to anyone.”

Chris looks up, happily surprised with his eyebrows raised behind the reading glasses he picked up somewhere.  “Thanks, sweetie.  I appreciate it.”

“We appreciate it,” Darren corrects softly, standing at the doorway to the living room.  He really does look ridiculously different, covered in all kinds of hair and without the sharp suits or tailored casual wear she usually sees him in when he’s out in public.

“Sorry, when I’m not working I kind of turn into a caveman,” Darren jokes, and there’s the Darren Criss she’s always seen, quirky and self-deprecating in a way that’s funny.  Now she sees it might not be so funny.

Darren stands behind Chris’s chair, and immediately they lean into each other, shifting gravities to accommodate the pull. They don’t touch but it kind of feels intimate anyways, and she leans back, feeling like she’s intruding being this close.

“Are you going to tell us your real name?  I’m assuming it’s not Rachel Berry.”

She laughs, too-loud in the echoey house. “Yeah, I guess I couldn’t have picked a more wrong alias.  But something about you made me think of the show, and well, now I know why.

“It’s, um, it’s Leanna.”  A middle name is close enough, right? She would never want to lie to Chris Colfer (or Darren Criss for that matter) because it feels like lying to her eight-year-old self, but middle name is technically not a lie.  Not really.

“Aren’t you going to ask me for my parents’ contact information?  ID card?  Birthday and social security card?” she adds bitterly, thumbing the edge of one of the cartons.  Darren seemed ready to send her out at a moment’s notice.  She would have been fine in the alley, she can take care of herself, and if they kick her out maybe she can at least find a spot next to a fence in a cul-de-sac or something to escape the wind.

“No,” Chris says carefully.  “All I need to know is if you have someone you know here in L.A.”

“I, uh, my parents live upstate.  And I have nowhere to stay.”  She feels horribly exposed, like she gave a piece of her soul away, but there’s still enough intact that she’ll stay intact, too.

Chris and Darren look at each other and apparently have an entire conversation in half a glance.  “I’ll go make up the guest bedroom,” Darren says decisively, though she has no idea what decision was made.  Hopefully that she’s nonthreatening enough to stay the night.  Honestly the worst she could do is steal from them, but there’s not exactly diamonds and silver sitting around.  There’s not even a People’s Choice Award in a cabinet as far as she can tell, just dozens of framed pictures on every surface and modest furniture.  She wonders what they do with all their money.

Darren leans in to press a kiss to Chris’s forehead and she has to look away.  She spent an entire two and a half hour movie sitting right behind a couple that was sucking face (hell, she’s made out with a guy she literally just met) but the most simplest of kisses between them feels like walking in right at the middle of a heartfelt confession or something.  It’s strange.

Darren disappears back towards what she would guess is the guest bedroom.  Chris just keeps sifting through piles of papers on the dining room table, humming under his breath and sorting them into piles that made no sense to her but he seems to understand.  She gets up slowly and he raises an eyebrow but says nothing.

The pictures really are everywhere, pictures of both of them at all ages, pictures of them with groups of vaguely similar-looking people that must be family, them with groups of people that look nothing like them that must be adopted family, and everywhere pictures of them together.  Posed shots and candids, professional and blurry camera phone shots, more than half of the pictures in the dining room (and the living room, too, when she wanders in) are the two of them looking happier than she’s ever seen two people look.

“So, the two of you...” she trails off curiously as she finishes the loop back to the dining room.  It’s not really her place to ask, and if Chris doesn’t want to answer she won’t push but... those pictures.  There’s so much love in every one of those pictures, more than she’s ever seen between two people, in person or captured on film.  She can’t even comprehend how that could be kept under wraps.

Chris looks up, sorting the paper he was holding.  “Yeah,” he says, smiling even though he still looks guarded, “the two of us.”

“When...?”  The pictures are a rough timeline, based on their ages and Darren’s hair, and she knows Darren originated a Broadway role and when it closed not long after came back to Hollywood, but besides that, nothing.  And how does Chris factor in...?

Chris laughs.  “How lame is it to say, from the moment we met?”

She remembers how they readjusted to fit around each other.  “No, I can believe that.”

Folding a leg underneath she settles back in, resting her elbows on the table.  She can hear doors shutting and sheets rustling somewhere in the house.

Chris eyes her again, like maybe he’s remembering what Darren said.  She huffs.

“You know if I even tried to give information to a tabloid or something it’s literally my word and not a bit of proof.  I don’t think anyone would believe a homeless, basically broke _six_ teen-year-old girl anyways.”

He laughs, and though the echo is still a little eerie it warms her from the inside out.  “No, I guess not,” Chris agrees.

“I just...” she tries to find the nicest way to say it, the least offensive way to ask. “...Those pictures.  I’ve never seen two people who-- I just don’t understand.  How you got, um, here.”

She hopes he gets that _here_ means _hiding your relationship and apparently Darren’s sexuality away from the world at large and freaking out when a fucking sixteen year old girl finds out_ (in the nicest way possible, of course) and judging by the way his face falls, he does.

“Is there someone in your life that you could never leave?”  And that’s not what she expected at all.  She scowls at him, not understanding.  “Uh, like someone who you always find yourself going back to, forgiving, loving no matter how much you try not to?  How much you don’t _want_ to, sometimes?”

For a second she thinks of her family, her older brother and her dog (god she’s going to miss Daisy) and even her mom with her stupid DVDs of old shows and CDs of songs that only play on the oldies station.  But first Dylan left, and now she left, and people always leave, don’t they?  She can’t imagine a single person she wouldn’t be able to leave before they left her.  She shakes her head.

“One day you will,” Chris says softly.  “And you’ll do everything you can to not need them, and you’ll do whatever it takes to forget them, and in the end you’ll never be able to.  Some people just take parts of you without you even realizing you gave it.”

She would roll her eyes at how dopily in love he is, but there’s a weight behind the words that feels like age-old, time-tested kind of love, one that’s been put through the wringer and somehow still made it out the other side.

“I don’t...” she tries, shaking her head again as if to clear it.  Philosophy wasn’t really what she was looking for.  “But how?  When?  There was the show and then your books and Darren was on Broadway and you..?”

Chris sighs.  “Always, like I said.  I guess we kind of danced around it, didn’t want to, to cross any lines or ruin our friendship.  It kind of came to a point though, and there was no going back.”  He must sense she’s getting short-tempered again, because he adds, “That was in... god, had to have been 2011.  Spending a whole summer together will bring out the inevitable, I guess.”

“So ever since?” she prods, knowing the show ended a few years after, but then so much happened since...

“Sort of,” he concedes, licking his lips and she can’t help but watch.  Chris is at least twice her age and obviously really, really gay, but he’s still as attractive as ever.  “It wasn’t always easy.  Maybe it was never easy.  There were fights, and after one we tried dating other people.  It didn’t last long though-- I guess he kind of ruined me for other men.”  She does roll her eyes this time, but Chris laughs.  “ _Anyways_ , yeah, after the show he went to New York and I only lasted like six weeks before I followed him.  It’s just a thing, I can’t explain it.  There’s always just, that thing.  It’s always there.”

“There,” she says derisively, trying and failing to be the gracious guest because she doesn’t _understand_.  Why would anyone choose to live like this, _thing_ or no thing? 

She tries again.  “So this big, cosmic thing is always there, and you’re never going to be able to escape it, right?”  Chris tilts his head, nods a little.  “So instead of doing the logical thing and moving to France or something and giving this whole fucking town the middle finger, you _stayed_ here?  And you _live_ like this?”

His ears are red and she’s worried she’s making him angry but she’s angry herself, worked up at the indignity of the whole thing.  Same-sex couples can get married in almost every state now, with only the most back-asswards ones still holding out, and yet Darren Criss is here with his god, _years_ -long relationship and he can’t have the same courtesy in his life?  It’s so _stupid_.

Chris’s voice wobbles just the tiniest bit when he finally speaks.  “I don’t like all the choices I’ve had to make, that _either_ of us have had to make, and he doesn’t like them either.  But there’s no other option for me, and you can trust I’ve tried them all.”

And she can’t understand, not really, but she believes him.  She knows there’s such things as unconditional love and trust in the world but she couldn’t fathom that a person could give their whole self so easily to someone else.  But maybe it’s not always blind faith-- maybe the thing that causes the least pain isn’t necessarily the easiest.

“Sorry,” she whispers, not sure what she’s apologizing for, but Chris reaches over and pats her hand all the same.

“Come on, lets get you fixed up,” he says quietly, and this time when he tries to carry her duffel bag, she lets him.

The guest bedroom is half a music studio, even though her split-second glimpse of the actual music studio tells her they have more than enough instruments to go around.  But there’s half a drumset and three amps in the guest bedroom, as well as more stacks of paper but thankfully these are contained in boxes.

“I forget how pack-ratty we are until someone else sees the house,” Chris muses as he makes sure she has enough pillows and gives her a towel for the shower.

“Goodnight, Leanna,” he calls as he leaves her on her own end of the house, turning out lights as he goes. 

Luckily he doesn’t wait to see her slow reaction to the name that’s not really hers.  “Goodnight,” she calls back in his vague direction, his answering hum bouncing back off the walls.

The towel is the fluffiest she’s ever felt, big enough to wrap around her twice and the brand name on the tag is something she’s never heard of before.  Then the shower is stocked with more bottles than she would ever know what to do with; the sheets on the bed feel like silk straight from China.  Her well-worn favorite t-shirt feels strangely rough right next to the smoothness of the sheets, and she knows she could never belong here.

Tomorrow, she’ll make a plan.  Tomorrow, she’ll find out what she’s going to do here in L.A.  Tomorrow.  But for tonight it’s at least nice to have someone who cares enough to take a stranger in off the streets.

 --

She wakes up to a grey sky outside, the feel of foreign sheets and the disorientation of the room more than enough to give her a rude awakening.

It’s a process to extract herself from the blissfully plush mattress (she’s pretty sure it’s memory foam though she’s never touched any before to be sure) but after the extremely vivid dream she had, she knows she only wants one thing.

At the very bottom of her duffel bag, tucked below the rigid bottom, is the one thing from that house she couldn’t bear to leave.  It’s a little bent and a little scratched but it’s a photo, one from way back when she was just a little girl and her older brother was still her hero and her parents still smiled and even kissed most days.  After all the pictures in this house, the ones of people she’s never met and especially the ones of two people she barely knows but extended her more kindness than she could have ever imagined, she gets now that maybe memories are there to hold on to when times get bad.  That perfect moment in time won’t change, even if the present is not nearly as nice to be in, and maybe that’s enough to push through.

She makes the bed and then dresses quickly, tearing one of the blank sheets in the back out of one of the books on the guest room bookshelf and scribbling out a note.  Slinging her duffel bag over her shoulder, she figures she has at least another hour  before either of them will stir on a Saturday morning.  At the last second she turns back and adds a P.S. to her note about not telling, just for good measure.  She’s pretty sure Chris gets that she meant it, before.

She almost makes it out the front door when she realizes the alarm is set and her heart sinks.  She wasn’t supposed to be relying on anyone here, that was the whole _point_ , and now she’s stuck in this house with fancy sheets and dozens of memories that aren’t hers and she just needs to--

“Going somewhere?”

Clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle the yelp, she jerks in surprise.  Her heart pounds from the scare, but the universal sound of cereal being poured into a bowl makes her want to cry at the normalcy of Saturday mornings fighting with her brother over who gets the last of the Lucky Charms.

He’s humming, pouring milk and clinking his spoon around.

“You know you’re not getting out unless I put the code in,” Darren calls from the kitchen, so casual like he isn’t a movie star and isn’t holding a teenage girl prisoner in his house.

Sighing and steeling herself to act like a normal fucking person, goddammit, she drops her duffel bag and walks cautiously into the kitchen, all shiny appliances and shiny countertops.  And there’s Darren Criss himself, unrecognizable with a full-on beard and some kind of cartoon pajama pants.

“What’s that?” she asks, unable to stop herself as he pushes the other bowl (Froot Loops, her second-favorite) towards her and she begrudgingly grabs a spoon.

“You don’t know who the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are?” he cries, and he sounds so deeply offended she almost feels bad.

“Um, I’m sorry, teenage-- _what?_ ”

He puts down the spoon and puts a hand over his heart, looking up to the ceiling like he’s asking the universe for forgiveness of her soul.  “Oh, these youths.  How will our sacred Earth survive in their care?”

She rolls her eyes, smiling down into her cereal as she picks out all the purple and red ones first.

“What are you going to do now?” Darren asks (and oh god he’s just Darren now, what the hell is her _life_ ), as casual as anything.

Fighting down the urge to squirm, she hedges.  “I don’t know.  Look for a job?  Find a place to stay first, I guess.  I’ve got a little bit of money, saved up from birthdays, you know.”

Darren hums again, a kind of affirmative sound.

She starts picking out the green ones, trying to find the right words again.  She knows once she walks out she probably won’t ever come back, and she can’t leave this house without saying what apparently neither of them will.

“So Chris,” she starts, watching him closely, “he’s your...”

“Everything,” Darren finishes, like she’s asked him the answer to two plus two.  Like it wasn’t even a question.

“Right,” she says, clearing her throat.  It’s so easy to get starry-eyed with people that are this ridiculously sure about each other.  “And no one knows?”

Darren’s whole face tightens, mouth and jaw set hard.  “I technically have a house in the Hills.  This one’s not under my name at all.  A driver leaves the empty house every morning and again in the afternoons, and a maid comes twice a week.  When things start looking suspicious I’ll stay there for a few days but... this is home.  He’s home.  The only people that know are our families, our closest friends, that’s it.  That’s all who can know.”

She nods, thinking.  It just seems so obvious to her, with the way they act and just _look_ at each other, but miscommunication is something she has more than enough experience with.  The last Froot Loop is soggy and she tilts the bowl before she has time to consider her table manners, but to hell with it-- she slurps down the dregs of milk.

Letting her spoon clatter with finality, she folds her arms, resolute.  If this is how Darren Criss remembers her, well, so be it.

“He deserves better than this.  You both deserve better than this.  _Years_ , you’ve been doing this, almost as long as I’ve been alive.  Aren’t you _tired?_ ”

She know they are, from the set of their shoulders to the state of their house to the lines in their faces.

“It’s like,” and it’s so hard to be sixteen and telling someone twenty years older than her what to do but _goddammit_ , “if you’re lying to most of the world, how long is it before you’re lying to yourself?”

Darren is looking at her so hard that it’s like she’s not even there.  “I’ll take the alarm off now,” he says quietly, scraping his chair back and padding out of the room.

Her hands are shaking because in this moment this feels like the most important thing she’ll ever do and _does he get it?_   She has no choice but to follow him, letting him drape the duffel bag across her body.

“Hey, if you ever find yourself without a place to stay, come here first,” Darren says, and she wants to cry with how sincere he looks, but she knows she won’t ever be back.  She kind of hopes they won’t be here for her to have the option to come back to, that they’ll be in some seaside cottage in a no-name town in Italy, finally getting what they really deserve: peace, quiet, and each other.

“Do the right thing,” she says instead, staring him down and making him listen.  “Fuck everyone else, I know he makes you happier than any career you may or may not have.  Fuck romantic comedies and summer blockbusters, come _on_ Darren.  If the only person who loves you after you’re finally honest is Chris, isn’t that still enough?”

For a second she thinks he’s going to slap her.

“The people you love are always enough,” he says finally, arms folded across his stomach and looking tinier than she ever imagined he could look.

She doesn’t know what else to say.  “Thank you, for everything,” she parrots automatically, edging towards the door.  Turning the deadbolt, and then the knob, the first rays of what promises to be a beautiful sunrise make her squint.

“Be good to him,” she says as she closes the door behind her, but she knows Darren doesn’t need reminding.

**Author's Note:**

> A follow-up and mini epilogue [here at my tumblr](http://fruitflyxo.tumblr.com/post/47200002883).


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